Here are a couple of news items worth discussing, one from abroad and one at home.
First up, in a ranting, unhinged video he filmed in front of a pile of dead Russian mercenaries, creepy, murderous Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin says he will withdraw his troops from the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on May 10. He repeatedly denounces top Russian military leaders in the video.
Why May 10 instead of, say, May 5? Apparently because there’s a big parade in Russia on May 9 to commemorate their WWII victory? From CNN:
The head of the private military company Wagner accused Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and armed forces chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov of bearing responsibility for “tens of thousands” of killed and wounded fighters, continuing his criticism campaign against Russia’s military leadership.
“The dead and wounded — and that’s tens of thousands of men — lie on the conscience of those who did not give us ammunition,” Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video statement released Friday on Telegram, later calling both officials by name.
“For tens of thousands of those killed and wounded, they will bear responsibility before their mothers and children, and I will make sure of that,” he added.In the same video message, Prigozhin praised the former deputy defense minister, Mikhail Mizintsev, who he said has recently joined the Wagner Group as its deputy commander.
No doubt Adam will post more informed commentary on this later than I can offer now, but wow. At some point, it seems likely that either Prigozhin or Putin will have to exit a multistory building via an open window. Preferably both!
In domestic news, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has thoughts on the latest revelation in the ongoing Clarence Thomas scandal, which John Cole covered in a post last night. Here’s a gift link to the WaPo story John quoted, and here are Whitehouse’s comments from Twitter:
Five years ago, I started casting a floodlight on Leonard Leo to explain to the American people how billionaires are working to grow their influence at SCOTUS to bend our democracy to their will.
As news continues to reveal the depth of Leonard Leo’s creepy plot, it needs to be clear: his business isn’t *before* the Court; his business *is* the Court.
To fill in the blanks here, the Judicial Education Project is the corporate 501c3 twin of the 501c4 Judicial Crisis Network, which funneled anonymous donations into ads for Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett.
It has a fellow “fictitious name” group (in effect same entity) that filed amicus brief with Supreme Court as “Honest Elections Project,” without discussing the de facto corporate identity of them all as Leonard Leo front groups.
It’s not just Thomas; they’re corrupt as fuck, the lot of them. I’m grateful Whitehouse continues to shine a spotlight on that slimy fuck Leo, who is much more of a household name these days than he was when he first started sleazing gross hard-right hacks onto the court.
Open thread.
cope
It’s funny to me that as a high school civics class student in the ’60s, the concept of three branches of government balancing each other out so as to prevent any one of them from becoming dominant always struck me as weird in that I didn’t really see what kept the supreme court in check.
Mai Naem mobile
So I called the USSC phone number i googled(202-479-3000). I believe its the public information officer number. I asked the poor lady who answered the phone if there was a price list available for bribes made to USSC justices. She hung up on me. I know I didn’t really accomplish much but I want somebody there to know that regular people are paying attention.
Mike in NC
Senator Whitehouse is a national treasure, unlike so many of his greedy, corrupt colleagues.
Scout211
Next Tuesday, Frontline is focusing on Ginni and Clarence. I hope they go deep and expose their corruption. We shall see.
CLARENCE AND GINNI THOMAS Politics, Power and the Supreme Court
MattF
Yeah, well. You see, there’s ordinary money, which smells bad and leaves a trail of slime, and then there’s immaculate money, which comes out of the pure hearts (and bank accounts) of true conservatives. Confusing the two is a sign of evil.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Mai Naem mobile:
I’d like to see some lawyers appearing before the Supreme Court grow a pair and scald Thomas’ corruption during oral arguments on cases where Crow, Ginni or Leo have clearly got some involvement. Make it uncomfortable.
On an unrelated note, I saw that Dicksanctimonious has appropriated obvious Disney fonts for his merch. I cooked up the letter he’ll probably be getting shortly:
“Dear Moron:
If you don’t knock it off, we have a large and experienced team of amoral predatory IP lawyers who will skull fuck you with the pens they use to sign their complaints, applications for injunctions and needlessly punitive damage requests. We don’t like seeing them do it as it is sickening to watch, but they seem to derive some strange pleasure from it as their only hobby. Frankly, I doubt that we would even need to pay them to do it; to them, their zeal to inflict mountains of pain appears to be the only real joy they seek in life.
Govern yourself accordingly.
With much love,
Bob Iger”
Geminid
Wagner Group and Army formations have been trying to take Bakhmut for 10 months now, wasting thousands of soldiers lives in the attempt. Now they have occupied 90% of Bakhmut, but a month from now they could well be back to zero.
The Ukrainian counter-offensive will begin any day now. An increased tempo in attacks on Russian fuel and ammunition depots may indicate that the offensive is in its first stages already.
OverTwistWillie
The next twenty-five years of Russian domestic politics will revolve around “Who lost Ukraine?”.
Chief Oshkosh
It’s interesting that the street address of the USSC is 1 First Street. The original FYIGM signal.
JPL
Great post! The Washigton Post has extensive coverage. Philip Bump highlighted this. link
It was written in 2011
Anonymous At Work
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: DO NOT CALL SCOTUS Switchboard like that, asking about bribes. The poor lady answering the phones isn’t responsible for or part of Thomas’s pay-for-play schemes. If you can reach behind her directly to Thomas’ offices, then that’s where you direct your calls and emails. Personally, I’d be jamming his phone lines with requests for sponsorship deals.
Second, Iger should grow a pair and just start cutting large checks to Democrats, but Disney Corporation won’t take a stand against the people currently and actively attacking them.
E.
The damage these people are likely to do to our institutions is unfathomable. They may get rid of Chevron deference—likely will—next term, adding to the disaster of their use of the “major questions doctrine” in West Virginia v EPA. Thomas has stated that he wishes to reverse the last century of Commerce Clause jurisprudence as well. This would be really revolutionary and seal the immiseration of the non wealthy. But just getting rid of Chevron is going to ravage the regulatory powers of the U.S. government.
Butch
I don’t normally advertise other sites but the Wagner video is available at Daily Kos; it comes with a strong trigger warning because it clearly shows the bodies of dead mercenaries.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/5/2167604/-Ukraine-Update-The-bizarre-case-of-Yevgeny-Prigozhin-s-descent-into-madness
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@E.:
How will the SCOTUS enforce these BS decisions?
ETA: They have no enforcement powers of their own
Betty Cracker
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
For real? Goddamn. So much for the “smarter Trump” branding!
OverTwistWillie
I think you have to be open to the possibility that Jerome Powell is just a dumbo.
Matt McIrvin
@cope: In theory the Supreme Court is subject to impeachment, the President and Senate control appointments, and it’s also possible in theory for the President and Congress to expand the Court. In practice it’s hard for any of these to operate in an environment of stark partisan division–but that’s a problem with the Constitution’s entire structure of checks and balances, which presumes that institutional loyalties will exceed partisan ones.
Wapiti
@Geminid: I think Wagner doesn’t want to be caught in Bakhmut if/when the UA offensive cuts through the supply lines behind those Russian forces.
Otoh, is Russia some democracy where military units can choose when to advance and when to withdraw?
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Think this through. Where does defying court orders one disagrees with end up?
NotMax
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Shorter version: “Don’t f*ck with McDuck.”
Shalimar
Prigozhin seems to believe Wagner isn’t getting ammo, but they have still managed to keep an offensive going for over half a year for a country that is supposedly very low on stocks. I wonder if they aren’t already getting all the ammo available to the detriment of regular troops and it still isn’t enough to make him happy.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Edited: Nowhere good. I know you’re ultimately right
PJ
@Wapiti: Supposedly Wagner is subject to the same commands as any other Russian battalion, it’s just that their recruiting and training is abnormal. See this Estonian intelligence analysis: https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1654493540565565441?cxt=HHwWgoC2if_G-PUtAAAA
John S.
@Matt McIrvin:
An even bigger issue when idiot Republican senators are bloviating about how it would be wrong for congress to enforce oversight over the judiciary because it’s a separate branch of government.
Some of the people in government have no idea how the government is actually supposed to work.
OverTwistWillie
Dark Brandon – making the trains run on time:
frosty
@Mai Naem mobile: That was a brilliant phone call. A shame they don’t have a published bribe list; that would make it much easier for the rest of us.
zhena gogolia
@cope: The advice & consent of the Senate to the appointments by the President.
Alison Rose
@OverTwistWillie: All of them, Katie.
This image is spot-on.
Geminid
@Wapiti: Someone noted that a few sentences after Prigozhin vowed to withdraw his troops from Bakhmut, he requested authorization from higher commanders for the move. So he hasn’t mutinied yet.
Prigozhin’s video is striking. He complains about the lack of ammunition supply, but he could just as well be indicting the war itself. Having the cameraman pan those mangled bodies may drive home a point different from the one he intended.
oatler
@Scout211:
Frontline? Will probably end with “and finally, what of Hunter Biden, who some say is the key to the whole controversy?”
Tony G
I’m not an expert on military or political arrangements, but I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that a situation in which the leader of a mercenary army is verbally attacking the government that is paying that mercenary army — is not a very stable situation.
Matt McIrvin
@John S.: Conservative arguments couched in procedural or abstract philosophical terms have been pure Calvinball since forever.
Why are they so keen on state legislatures acting as unchecked independent governing bodies with ultimate sovereignty, that can even select the President? Because they think that, given that power, they can gerrymander a majority of state legislatures to hold them forever. Similar with the Court. The question is always just whatever structural argument will preserve minority rule by Republicans.
Tony G
As for the obvious corruption of the Supreme Court — gee, I wish that some Democrats who are in a position of authority would loudly and proudly go after them, naming names and calling bribery by it’s proper name.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Republicans had no problem campaigning against the Supreme Court for 50 years, so we should ignore the hand-wringers. But the key point is that they persevered.
Geminid
@Tony G: Prigozhin isn’t exactly attacking the the government, just rival General Gerasimov, the theatre commander. Prigozhin’s still making Putin look bad, though. He may get evacuated soon, feet first.
Kay
@Tony G:
I agree. Really not best case.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tony G: Like Sheldon Whitehouse perhaps?
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: You’re indefatigable.
Jay
@Geminid:
The Silovi are starting to position themselves for a collapse.
The General formerly in charge of Russian Military Logistics, Mikhail Mizintsev( The Butcher of Meriupol) was fired and appointed to run a Siberian Training Depot. Instead, he joined Wagner.
Shoigu, and many of the Silovi have raised their own PMC’s, to the point that there are dozens now, many using the War aginst Ukraine to try to create “combat experienced troops” to fill in what they have poached in the way of Officers and NCO’s from the Ruzzian Army.
There are rumours that Shoigu and others want to “break” Wagner, and absorb it into their own forces, in part because of the political power and esteem that Wagner has amongst the vatnick Milbloggers, but the general public, (outshining even the Ruzzian Military’s elite forces), but mostly because Wagner’s operations in the Middle East and Africa is a multibillion dollar cash cow in fungible assets like rare earths, gemstones gold, etc.
JML
Reversing Chevron would be a mess in the modern era, but the right-wingers who think this will somehow bring back utopia for them have really lost their minds, or are they just assuming they’ll never run the executive branch again? They loved agency rule-making powers when they were in charge! even Alito can’t get enough votes for a ruling that’s “Chevron goes bye-bye except when republicans make the rule”.
but I suppose the people who crusade against government do think it’s a good thing when government fails to work, so returning the minutiae of legislative rule-making back to Congress (which the GOp stuffs full of morons and extremists) should ensure the federal government becomes less and less effective at…everything.
Maybe that will get the billionaire class to finally turn on those loons
Jay
@Tony G:
Wagner’s MO is to mostly self finance by stealing assets and valuables from areas they control.
OverTwistWillie
@Tony G:
A dynamic that worked a wonder for the The Fourth Republic.
I am sure Putin has never seen “The Battle of Algiers”, and if he did, he would be bored, and dismiss it because obviously the French were not cruel enough.
cope
@Matt McIrvin: Exactly and I understood those aspects of the balance of power. However, even as an ignorant ninth grader, living in the ’60s, I could see that partisan politics was becoming the order of things.
oldster
I have no special insight into Prigozhin’s sick mind, but I am *very* confident that he does not give a damn about the deaths of his conscripts. He recruited them from prisons, he thinks they are the lowest of the low, and if they die then he does not have to pay them.
So, if he seems legitimately upset in this video (I have not watched it) then he is either faking it, or someone close to him died. It might make sense to ask him where his kids are, since even monsters sometimes care about their spawn (tfg being more monstrous than monsters in this regard).
If he is in pain, then it is good news. He is a moral abomination, and I hope his failure to capture Bakhmut signs his death warrant.
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
Because they have never gotten over desegregation. In their minds, and for good reason, the federal government is the reason they can’t drive darkies out of town and beat queers to death anymore.
Baud
@JML: Chevron is often used by agencies to relax regulations on industry. It’s not a one-way street.
E.
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): These are not doctrines that require enforcement. They are judicial doctrines that determine the process for governing disputes.
The current system allows Congress to vote on a bill that adopts general language authorizing, say, the Federal Highway Administration to set engineering standards for new bridges, even though no individual congressperson knows anything about bridge engineering. Without Chevron every regulatory dispute becomes a battle of experts over which bridge standards are appropriate, or if there should even be standards.
FelonyGovt
@JPL: It’s true that this has been known for a very long time, with little or no impact.
I do think now, though, the combination of truly unpopular opinions like Dobbs with a deluge of news highlighting unethical and corrupt actions, mostly but not exclusively involving Clarence and Ginni Thomas, is penetrating into the brains of normies and others who previously didn’t know or care.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Anonymous At Work: Disney Corp is smart enough to donate large sums of money to PACs without disclosure requirements.
JoyceH
I’m really struck by the Leonard Leo payoff. There’s nothing there about ‘pay Ginni for the thing’, or any mention of a project or any work of any sort, just ‘give Ginni 25K’.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Maybe Prigozhin just needs more troops for his Africa adventures and this is all political theater meant to justify pulling troops away for those more profitable ventures.
twbrandt
https://universeodon.com/@georgetakei/110317170073304700
Baud
@twbrandt:
Hahaha.
FelonyGovt
Just imagine if, say, George Soros was paying for vacations for Elena Kagan. The uproar there would be!
Jay
skerry
@twbrandt: I’d be willing to bet the Thomas’ are on Crow’s cellular phone plan
Jay
trollhattan
@Scout211: Uh oh, does this mean Elon is going to reclassify their Twitter account?
I figure he’s paid for at least two SCOTUS judges by now, and has an investment to protect.
Jay
@skerry:
The Family and Friends plan?
What about Crow’s PornHub subscription?
Geminid
@oldster: I don’t think Prigozhen cares about the convicts he gets killed either. He’s losing his regulars too, and that would bother him.
Jay
Not too shabby for a bunch of “brain dead cartoon dogs”,……..
trollhattan
@Jay: It’s all so very weird. The Russian state petro company Gazprom was given the green light to form their own mercenary force, and they’re now beefing with Wagner.
How long before Chevron and Tesla and Fox News and Hobby Lobby and Ticketmaster decide to do the same?
Kay
@JoyceH:
I personally believe Ginni is genuinely unhinged so they give her no-show jobs to keep her busy and keep her offline and off the phone. Right side politics is so flush with cash- they pay everyone gobs of money.
rikyrah
@Mai Naem mobile:
clap clap clap clap clap
mrmoshpotato
@twbrandt: Seriously?! A Supreme Court Justice doesn’t pay for his own Netflix account?! Oh FFS!
Miss Bianca
@mrmoshpotato:
@twbrandt: Wait, that’s not from The Onion?
tobie
@OverTwistWillie: I’ve often felt that Powell just follows a thin instruction manual on what he should do as Fed Chair in various scenarios. There’s something mechanical about how he’s approached global inflation, as if he’s following the steps in a recipe book. His training is as a lawyer, not an economist.
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato: Methinks it’s an “Oh, my” joke from Sulu. But like the best satire, it’s hard to distinguish from reality.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: That makes a lot more sense than the notion that anyone would pay G. Thomas to perform actual work. She comes across as an addled fanatic in her many text messages to Mark Meadows and others during the attempted coup. She sounds like a drunk dope on the phone message she left for Anita Hill. The only time I’ve ever heard her sounding semi-coherent was on a clip that came out a few years back that was recorded at a cult awareness group meeting in the mid-1980s. She sounds a bit mushy-brained in that too, but at least she was saying cults are bad. She has a weak mind, and I don’t think she’s particularly bright either.
Scout211
@FelonyGovt: unfortunately, Open Secrets wrote about all the justices in 2019 and every one of them took trips on someone else’s dime.
They compiled a chart: This google spreadsheet lists 2004-2018.
I post this because we all need to be aware that the Scalia and Thomas defenders will use the liberal justices to make it seem like they all do it, so it’s okay.
They already are going hard at Sotomayor for not disclosing her book deal while hearing a case involving Penguin Random House.
The travel and gifts are questionable but undisclosed travel and gifts and payments and contracts are much more questionable.
But it does appear that these gifts definitely needs more sunshine
Jay
@trollhattan:
it is, and isn’t “weird”. Gazprom and many other Ruzzian “Corporations” have long had their own “Security” forces.
When the Ruzzian Military was “professionalized” in the late 90’s/early aughts, a lot of the “security” roles that were filled with Conscripts like powerlines, refineries, factories, pipelines, were filled by the “Corporations” with their own Security “forces”. The Chechen Wars, (until recently*), Dagistan, Inguisheta,, Georgia, Crimea, the first invasion of Ukraine, all required that these “Security Forces” be capable of light combat.
*Kadyrov has recently said that only Chechen State police and security forces are allowed in Chechnia. Corporate and Russian forces should be shot on sight.
As these Corporations are basically the private property of the silovi, that means (and has been shown in practice) that they are basically the oligarch’s private armies.
There are now over a dozen active in the War on Ukraine, in part because the Oligarch’s are using them to seize, loot and control assets in Occupied Ukraine, stealing them not from Ukraine, but from the DPR and LPR gangs that first stole them from Ukraine.
sab
I heard Bill Barr on the radio talking at the Cleveland City Club today. He’s on a book tour apparently. Somebody asked him about the Clarence Thomas situation. He said that there are three coequal branches of government and each branch must police itself because it is inappropriate for them to police each other because then they would not be equal.
He actually said that. Apparently he never heard about Checks and Balances in the course of that fancy education he had. Also too the power of impeachment is with Congress.
Baud
@sab:
If that were true, Congress couldn’t enact ethics laws for the Executive Branch.
ETA: Or make bribing judges illegal.
Roger Moore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
With Chevron, it’s really all up to the courts. The Federal administrative agencies depend on the courts to enforce their rules. When, say, the EPA comes up with a rule about how much phosphate an industrial plant is allowed to release into a river, the way they actually enforce that is through fines. If the courts tell the EPA it isn’t allowed to create that rule, they’ll also refuse to enforce any fines that result from it.
Soprano2
@E.: I’ve come to believe Republicans want to reverse the whole 20th century.
sab
@Baud: I hope he doesn’t succeed in his efforts to salvage his reputation.
Chris
@Jay:
More and more the twenty-first century feels like it’s just been the age of returning to feudalism. But nobody’s gone further along those lines than Russia.
Gin & Tonic
@Jay: Also, since most here will be unaware, the Twitter handle @yurapalyanytsia is a sort of joke: “Yura” is a shortened form of the name “Yuriy” – which may be this guy’s name – but “palyanytsia” is a sort of shibboleth. It’s the name of a type of bread, but it is reputed to be a very difficult word for russians to pronounce correctly, so Ukrainians sometimes end up saying to other soldiers “hey, say ‘palyanytsia'”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
What!? Would he have said something like that 30 years ago publicly? I have a feeling he would not have
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: In Calvinball tradition, though, that preference often flips when the opportunity arises to lord it over blue-staters with right-wing federal power (federal bans on certain abortion procedures or mifepristone).
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I don’t know. He was around back then enabling Iran Contra activities.
In his speech he also rambled on a bit about Congress harassing Trump with all those impeachments and Russiagate.
sdhays
@Scout211: I skimmed through that spreadsheet, and it seems to me there’s a reason these are disclosed – they’re almost all legal conferences/events where the justice is getting compensated for being a speaker/important participant. I think most people can accept that that is not (obviously) corruption and comes with the territory of being Federal judge, especially if you’re a Supreme Court Justice. It can be abused, of course, but the idea isn’t offensive.
I didn’t see any disclosures, from anyone, of free vacations with billionaires. It’s quite different.
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
Grandpa Yurko and Nother Alex Fergusson Fella attended on behalf of NAFO.
Needless to say, NAFO morale is at a record high.
Roger Moore
@Soprano2:
There’s a large group of conservatives who want to reverse the Enlightenment.
Geminid
I was listening to the Harrisonburg station on my way to work this morning, and on the state and local news segment they reported that the West Virginia Senate race was heating up. Republican Rep. Alex Mooney has called his primary opponent, Governor Jim Justice, a “RINO.”
Justice fired back, claiming that Mooney was a carpetbagger from Maryland, and therefore is “a Terrapin, a Turtle.” Aside from the turtle stuff, this race actually may be typical of next year’s Republican primaries.
Jay
Chris
@Roger Moore:
LGM had something a couple months ago about a right-wing “intellectual” who wanted to straight-up dissolve existing national borders and create an “Empire of Our Lady of Guadalupe,” a pan-American government founded on Catholic theocracy and apparently a stepping stone to a one-world government run on the same principles. https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/02/the-cognitive-infiltration-of-adrian-vermeule
In other words, reversing even the Westphalian system and the existence of nation-states like the U.S.A.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: I knew one who believed the ideal form of government was that of the Byzantine Empire, because it was the last government where God had directly picked the ruler.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
She manages the former clerks of Clarence Thomas discussion group – some kind of listserve or something. We only found out about it because she went nuts after Biden was elected and apparently some of the former clerks were horrified with her insurrection talk. I think that’s bizarre and inappropriate – that she’s in charge of this group- but maybe it’s a way she can feel like she has a hand in without doing real damage.
This is just WAY, WAY too clubby. They need to be checked, hard.
Anyway
@Kay:
Totes with you on this, Kay. RW reactionary sugar daddies everywhere you look.
twbrandt
@Miss Bianca: it’s a Mastodon post from George Takei and he’s not being serious
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
You ever feel bad about some of the politicians you’ve voted for? If so, just remember that God picked the Byzantine Emperors. And look how they turned out. If even God can fuck up that badly, what chance do we mere mortals have?
sdhays
@Matt McIrvin: …what was their explanation for God picking so poorly that the empire was destroyed hundreds of years ago and no one has asked “Him” to pick their leaders anymore since?
Omnes Omnibus
@sdhays: When I was a law review editor, we had Judge Louis Pollak speak at a symposium. We paid for his flight and hotel. That was it. That was allowed because it isn’t fair to expect him to show up at his own expense. While clerking in federal court later on, the judicial code of ethics was taken serious even by clerks. Thomas is so fucking corrupt.
Jay
and Gonzalo Lira was arrested today in Kharkiv,
https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1642130636466008067
Chris
@Anyway:
Honestly a pretty good argument for taxing their money away.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Just no ethical sense at all- no inner monitor. Do these clerks she’s promoting have business before the court? She doesn’t care. No ethical issues ever occur to her.
Whitehouse is right. They have PROVED they cannot police themselves. Put a stern grownup in charge, one who isn’t excessively impressed with a robe.
Anyway
@Chris:
The 21st C Rethuglican party is all in on neo-feudalism. I feel that is their core even more than white supremacy, ethno-nationalism etc. Feudal societies are their happy place.
Kay
@sdhays:
Judges are encouraged to go to legal conferences and academic events. It’s not the same as a vacation.
Matt McIrvin
@sdhays: Humanity is perpetually falling into sin and disobedience, of course. It’s the catch-all explanation for evil.
Matt McIrvin
…Fractional-reserve banking comes from, what, the 17th century? Your hardcore goldbugs want to go back to before that.
Chief Oshkosh
@Scout211:
@sdhays: I agree that these were probably reported as they appear edumacational and/or to do with serving the profession and society. That’s maybe fine for travel expenses (travel, meals, lodging). BUT, just like most federal employees, they should not be allowed to accept honoraria, even straight-up fees for speaking or otherwise participating. And they ESPECIALLY shouldn’t get those fees without taking vacation or personal leave. Just like every other government employee…
Motherfuckers need to be reminded who they work for.
Chetan Murthy
@Matt McIrvin:
FTFY
sdhays
@Matt McIrvin: Of course. It makes you wonder why God bothers at all.
gvg
@Omnes Omnibus: yes but also think through that happens when they say they are the final word on the Constitution but then do something that really is clearly not constitutional and you took an oath to the constitution…like say overturning one of the amendments or overturning an election with not even a valid slight figleaf?
We aren’t there yet, but I am getting worried. And I don’t know what the answer is, but I really want a big democrat wave followed by expanding the court and well I think we have to impeach thomas. Also impose manditory disclosure and ethics with automatic recusal and automatic expulsion if found in violation by a board.
The Moar You Know
@Scout211: yeah, I knew this was going to come back and sodomize us hard. They’re all on the gravy train.
Oh well, get it out there and get this stopped. Nobody on the Court should be getting this sort of treatment.
Makes me wonder what’s going on at the circuit level. Because I suspect they’re all in the racket as well.
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: Essentially the same people.
Matt McIrvin
@The Moar You Know: Fine, impeach all nine of them and replace them all! We win harder.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Holy crap, you’re right — GT has no sense of what’s appropriate. I’d forgotten the listserv thing, and now she’s got a book out about continuing their influence on clerks? Damn.
Matt McIrvin
@gvg: “The true meaning of the First Amendment is that you have to blow Donald Trump” or some such thing…
Betty Cracker
BTW, these serial corruption revelations about Clarence Thomas make Senator Feinstein’s absence all the more distressing. IIRC, if Dems had a working majority on the Judiciary Committee, they could subpoena Thomas rather than inviting Roberts to visit (and getting the finger in return). I have no idea how Senate committee subpoenas work; for all I know, it would be possible for Thomas to drag that process out with legal challenges until he outlives everyone on the committee.
Anyhoo, my point is, it sucks that we don’t have a real majority on that critical committee at this moment. If Feinstein can sit in a chair, they need to fly her ass to D.C. Could she be any more infirm than Strom Thurmond was back in the day? Good God, Repubs wheeled that 100-year-old ghoul out for every critical vote for as long as he could fog a mirror.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Moar You Know: Oh ffs, flying to South Fucking Bend, Indiana, to speak to a law school is actually something that justices/judges are encouraged to do as a part of educating new lawyers. There is a difference between that kind of thing and luxury vacations.
Citizen Alan
@Chris: That is basically what the Anti-Christ did in the Left Behind series! Which just confirms my belief that most evangelicals worship the devil but are too stupid to realize it!
Old School
@Betty Cracker:
Ginni doesn’t have a book coming out. The reference was to a book that come out last year:
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
and Honorariums even for SCOTUS Judges are small, $2k or less.
In Canada, most educational orgs max them at $500, and they are considered to be income for tax purposes by the CRA
https://fixthecourt.com/2019/12/whats-cost-book-scotus-justice/#:~:text=SCOTUS%20justices%20have%20accepted%20honoraria,the%20regulations%20remain%20in%20effect.
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
Picture here (posted last week):
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
If I can’t be outraged at everybody, I’m not going to be outraged at anybody.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: I can’t even tell if that’s real about the Netflix password. They are beating us down with absurdity.
Chris
@Anyway:
It is my general belief that all societies, left to themselves, trend towards aristocracy. The rich, powerful, and connected will always work to concentrate more and more of the money, power, and connections into their own hands, pass them on to their kids, and shut out everybody else or as many of them as humanly possible. Happened in the communist world, definitely happening in the capitalist one.
And yeah, feudalism probably is their happy place even more basically than anything else. All of them want to be Immortan Joe. You can leave them in a blindingly white part of the country with no black or immigrant or native people to speak of, and they’ll still want to be lording it over someone.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: Go after anyone if they are corrupt. Even our side, if the shoe fits.
I suspect with the SC it would be grain of salt for the Liberal justices vs. the ocean for the power grabbing right-wing justices.
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
I mean, I think we all know what conservatives would do to Jesus if he came back.
I always tell this story: for a little while before I learned better I used to be at a fundiegelical church that, among other things, was deeply concerned about “witchcraft” – something that covered everything from celebrating Halloween, to reading Harry Potter, to taking yoga for some fucking reason. Anyways, come Easter, we’re all watching The Passion of the Christ, and along comes the moment where one of the priests is saying that Jesus is guilty of witchcraft, because he performed miracles and clearly that’s the only way he could have done it. I spent that whole scene just discreetly side-eyeing everybody else in the church and being like “… am I really the only one who understands the irony here?”
West of the Rockies
Oh, how very sad… a shit-ton of mercenaries are dead. Taking cash to indiscriminately kill people has consequences. Whocouldaknow?
Jay
@WaterGirl:
the thing is, there are valid reasons for SCOTUS members to take paid travel and hotels, paid meals and even honorariums,
it’s not corruption if it’s educational and non partizan.
Technically, even giving a paid speech to The Federalist Society is in a grey area.
Consultancy fees or non-jobs, even some “real” jobs to a spouse or family member however,……. or paid for luxury travel, private school tuition, questionable real estate deals, stock options,…….etc, on the other hand,…….
And the funny thing is, nobody is accusing the Three of that, they are “whataboutting” a minimal paid trip to give a presentation at a Law School,……
same thing, right?//
Gin & Tonic
@Jay: More on Gonzalo Lira:
Betty Cracker
@Old School: Okay, thanks!
@Steeplejack: Jesus, that’s dumb.
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: It was something George Takei posted on mastodon. I think he was pulling everyone’s legs.
Oh (my), Sulu, you national treasure!
pajaro
@Scout211:
I looked at the spreadsheet. Most of the “trips” reimbursed by others are for travel to give speeches to Universities and the like. The school where I taught hosted judges as much as we could, to give talks or even judge an occasional moot court. We didn’t expect the judges to pay for their travel out of their own pockets.
If people can’t figure out the difference between reimbursing judges for flying commercial to Chicago to give a speech at Northwestern and the undisclosed gifts that Thomas has received, we’re doomed.
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
he was already arrested once, last year in April, took deportation and non-return,
but he just had to return to the scenes of his crimes and keep shitposting,…….
moron.
prostratedragon
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yes. All this garbage traces back to that. Adults who act like spoiled brats are a menace.
mrmoshpotato
George Santos is a lying sack of shit.
Steve Hofstetter reports.
Paul in KY
@Chris: That’s pretty fucked up, even for them.
rikyrah
MoveMississippiForward (@HamnerPam) tweeted at 11:26 PM on Wed, May 03, 2023:
“My friends, this is a different governor’s campaign than we have ever seen before in our state because we are not up against a local-yokel Mississippi Democrat, we are up against a national liberal machine,” Reeves told a crowd in Richland. https://t.co/ULNpylzgKN
MoveMississippiForward (@HamnerPam) tweeted at 11:26 PM on Wed, May 03, 2023:
@MSNBC @abcnews @CBSNews @NBCNews @nytimes @WashPost
@tatereeves is MAGA wannabe tfg.
If y’all ignore this governor’s race where the largest welfare fraud in the history of the state is being investigated by the @DOJCrimDiv https://t.co/PqmiXQeMQ1
MoveMississippiForward (@HamnerPam) tweeted at 11:27 PM on Wed, May 03, 2023:
We have a chance to move this state forward into 21st century. Mississippians future is greater than its past.
Amplify the voice or reason instead of your clickbait chaos.
@BrandonPresley for Mississippi, someone who can lead and govern…instead of deflect, distract and deny. https://t.co/SM4xNszpMf
(https://twitter.com/HamnerPam/status/1653979539297452033?t=e2Wp0el32ObIb9TxUlfKwQ&s=03)
rikyrah
@Frankensteinbeck:
Not one lie told.
rikyrah
BombayK (@OuterBoroRoyal) tweeted at 7:12 AM on Fri, May 05, 2023:
The January 6th defendants are riddled with former service members. Teixeira, the DoD leaker, was a service member. We KNOW that the military is rife with white supremacy, yet the media wants to treat Daniel Penny’s past service as exculpatory.
(https://twitter.com/OuterBoroRoyal/status/1654458939826749441?t=PNLdE_HOonMXMizTnD3z4w&s=03)
prostratedragon
@Steeplejack: He don’t know very much, do he?
Ksmiami
@E.: we will eliminate and defund the So called Supreme Court- should already be in the works. The institution is a failure.
WaterGirl
@Jay: I totally agree. But I wasn’t saying otherwise.
This is how I feel about everyone in power, our side or theirs.
WaterGirl
@prostratedragon: I thought that was snark. He was mocking them for being stupid enough to use their for and style. But what do I know?
brantl
Darth Cheney is a Leonard Leo disciple, he was responsible for the term “neo-conservative”; the sons of bitches were quite close.
Chris
@Paul in KY:
Yeah. It’s the closest equivalent I’ve seen in the West to Daesh/ISIS.